


What Wind is to Fire

by jonasnightingale



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Brotp, Drabble, F/M, Gen, I don't know, Introspection, allusions to rollisi, barba returns, barba rollins friendship, cut from the same cloth, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28427349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonasnightingale/pseuds/jonasnightingale
Summary: A drabble on the Rollins x Barba friendship. Because they share a connection, a history, a chip on their shoulders. And when he left there was a damage done he had not counted on.
Relationships: Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr./Amanda Rollins, Rafael Barba & Amanda Rollins
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	What Wind is to Fire

He expects the hesitance, the apology tour. He knows all the ways he let them down. But when he walks back into the squad room and she meets his gaze with an impenetrable mask of indifference, he feels his gut twist with regret. He’d left Olivia without a confidant, Carisi without a mentor, but her he had left without a friend.

He’d recognised her that first day, in the way you instantly notice one made of the same stock as yourself. They were both walking wreckages, a mess of traumas and insecurities masked by sharp tongues and well crafted defences. They had the same walls, the same scars.

She knew about his fathers belt, he knew about her fathers fists. Their confessions were allusions, inferences - the names never peppered into conversation but still they each knew the others hearts. It was always so easy to sink onto a stool at Pop’s - a bar where Liv would never come looking for him - and share a drink over the days agonies. There needn’t be pretence or bravado, they were mirrors of the other. They recognised the chains of broken childhoods, the bloodied fingers from fighting their way out tooth and nail, the shadows they would never escape, the monsters they’d never really outrun. He never shied away from her sharp corners and she grew to appreciate his stern back, the set of his shoulders, the tense of his jaw. They shared a strength that could bear each others lofty histories. 

Only he knew the dark truths of Patton, and it was a tale that wore heavy on his soul. She’d never allow him to comfort her in the way Liv did, would never accept the gestures of friendship in caffeine and dinners and dropping by. But they had their own shorthand, a litany of silent conversations and short nods and turning a blind eye to barely-concealed anguish. They showed their love in sarcasm, in raised brows and snarky responses. Because that’s what it was, at the heart of it, it was love. It wasn’t traditional, but hey so little in their lives was. It was a friendship that worked for them. They traded quips and curt glances and the occasional wink, and if their amity flew under the radar, it just made things easier.

There were nights that saw them sat in companionable silence, drinking whisky on his couch. The occasional night of tip-toeing around her apartment after Jesse was asleep, talking in whispers and stifled giggles. And one night that had them falling together in a sad desperate push of tongues. Because it was hard, to never be good enough, to always be the damaged ones. Despite all they’d done to try to prove their parents wrong, they were still always the ones left behind. People didn’t stay for them. Amanda should have known he would be no different.

He tries to catch her eye throughout the day, but she’s always occupied with something else. And when he walks out of the courtroom and sees her leant against the corridor wall, hope flares within him. This is where they had met, where everything had began. Her gaze flicks to his face for a moment before moving past him, pocketing her phone as Carisi steps towards her. He needs a drink, watches the unchanging space between Carisi and Rollins before turning towards Olivia. 

And that night he sits at Pop’s, hand around a glass of her favourite whisky, eyes trained on the door in hope. The ice cubes melt into the drink, the condensation of the glass wet against his hand. The bartender watches with him, lifts his head to check for the flash of blonde hair each time the door chimes. It never comes, _she_ never comes. He downs the whisky, flinches at its warmth. 

The lights of the city flash against the cab’s windows, and he remembers a time they had shared this ride, how she had let her head fall heavy against the window as she admitted “I almost kissed him. In Virginia.”, how haunted her eyes had been later when she said “I can’t keep losing people Barba.” He thumbs open their text thread, stares at the last message he had sent, the week Billie was born. He closes the phone with a deep sigh and vows to try again tomorrow. 

**Author's Note:**

> “Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great.”  
> ― Roger de Bussy-Rabutin


End file.
